The Hot Meals program is just one of many services the church provides for the Cleveland community. Its pastor, Reverend Earl Preston Jr., believes a church is a microcosm of community needs, as well as a place for worship. This principle has driven Morning Star to create, host and help facilitate a wide variety of initiatives, including an after-school program for local children and teens, a mentoring program for teenage mothers, a housing center for the elderly and a food pantry for low-income residents.

Morning Star is able to host these and more programs because of its recent move to a larger building. Four years ago, the 87-year-old congregation was situated in a deteriorating building in northeast Cleveland. Preston and his fellow church leaders felt a new space was needed to better serve the congregation and community.

They found a historic, vacant building that suited the church's needs, and ShoreBank helped them develop the financing to purchase and renovate it. Now, that building is home to Morning Star's large congregation, usually between 2,500 and 3,000 people, and ever-expanding social service programs.

ShoreBank recognizes that religious organizations help anchor urban neighborhoods, invest in their communities by redeveloping property, create community centers and provide advocacy and social services. ShoreBank is one of the first financial institutions to establish services for churches and religious organizations; it also provides financing to other nonprofit organizations.